Looting Feedback

[Indirik]

Saw this posted in Sandalak yesterday:

Out-of-Character from Ana Leuin   (2 hours, 34 minutes ago)
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I have looted in multiple regions expecialy the rich ones in the south like moeth and have only recovered between 2 - 5 gold for 8 hours of work. And I even had over 20 men. The gold kept Ana satisfied.. Now that she isn't getting boon there may be the slaughtered bodies of entire families lining the streets.
M. pieprzyk

I've seen other reports as well that looting doesn't really gain you much gold these days.

[Indirik]

Got tthis today in Morek:

Out-of-Character from Kenshin Blackwood   (4 hours, 29 minutes ago)
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Your men take 37 gold worth of money and valuables from the people of Poryatu.
Your men take 2 bushels of food from the people of Poryatu, and send it to your home region of Muspelheim.
Your men also restock their provisions from stolen food.
170 peasants are killed in the process.

170 peasants? really? Is the new code supposed to be this hard even you go after the infastructure and be strict with it (the option how "honorable" you are)?
Markus Kelanti

[Lorgan]

I believe loot reports showed between 100 and 200 gold on takings a little while back in some of Nothoi's mountains.

[Anaris]

OK, I may need to tweak killings down some and peasant-gold up some.

[Chenier]

You know what would be nice? Taxing loot gains. Just likes the letters of marque. It would open up new possibilities, and encourage leaders to allow private raiding initiatives thanks  to self-gain.

[Anaris]

You know what would be nice? Taxing loot gains. Just likes the letters of marque. It would open up new possibilities, and encourage leaders to allow private raiding initiatives thanks  to self-gain.

Ooh, that's an interesting idea. I rather like it.

I'll have to consider how it could work, and what the implications are, but it does raise interesting possibilities.

[Chenier]

I can think of two ways. First would be something like automatic fines for breaking the law, except as a % of the spoils instead of as a fixed amount per act.

Second would be through the armies: sponsors can set a % of the looting that goes to the war chest. Those higher up could then tax a portion of the warchest's gains or the like. This would be closer to letters of marque, I think, as the sponsor would be charged with collecting the dues and handing them over.

[Indirik]

Don't get too complicated with it. We don't need multiple layers of taxation for looting gains. That's overkill. In fact, this entire mechanic is probably overkill. Looting already gains you very little in most cases. No one is getting rich from it. Adding taxes on top of it is pretty pointless. The more I think about it, the more useless this seems.

[GundamMerc]

Don't get too complicated with it. We don't need multiple layers of taxation for looting gains. That's overkill. In fact, this entire mechanic is probably overkill. Looting already gains you very little in most cases. No one is getting rich from it. Adding taxes on top of it is pretty pointless. The more I think about it, the more useless this seems.

No one is getting rich from looting because it hasn't been tweaked.

[Lorgan]

What are you people talking about?

Zuhle: Woodsland, income: 296 gold. Looted 7 times for gold by one noble: total gains: ~200 gold.
Pel Mark: Mountain, income: 816 gold. Actual looting report:
Your men take 266 gold worth of money and valuables from the people of Pel Mark and the local tax office.
65 peasants are killed in the process.

Looting makes you rich.

[Indirik]

I'm glad it's working for you.

That doesn't change my point in any meaningful way, though. The suggested mechanic doesn't really add anything meaningful to the game. It's another way for those who already have money and power to sit around doing nothing and still accumulate yet more money. What does this add to the game that will give the majority of the players more to do, have more fun, and keep playing? "Your men bring back 300 gold from their looting efforts. Your army liaison confiscates half of it, which is to be delivered to your duke, who hasn't left his estate in three years."

[Lorgan]

I'm glad it's working for you.

Reading the details Anaris posted, it's probably got to do with this:

- Changed the effectiveness of looting to be based on population density and how many peasants a given group of soldiers can realistically (?) cover in the given amount of time

Mountains have a low population density but produce a ton of gold.

"Your men bring back 300 gold from their looting efforts. Your army liaison confiscates half of it, which is to be delivered to your duke, who hasn't left his estate in three years."

Maybe it'll give people yet another reason to rise up against the inactive duke?

[Indirik]

Because they have so many options for that. 

More than likely they will simply create our join another army that doesn't do that, and nothing will change. So the net effect is more complexity in the system, an option that mostly doesn't get used (and when it does get used, it's probably not being used in a manner beneficial to the game), and no real change to anything that makes the dev time worthwhile, which could have been better used to fix some of the major systemic problems we still have.

I'm still not seeing the real benefit to the game from implementing this.

[Chenier]

I can only think of two realms who ever really looted for the heck of it, BoM and Thalmarkin (who incidentally occupy the same territory). A few others might have, but it was rare.

Loot tax would encourage more rulers to launch wars for other things than total annihilation of the enemy realm.

[Anaris]

I can only think of two realms who ever really looted for the heck of it, BoM and Thalmarkin (who incidentally occupy the same territory). A few others might have, but it was rare.

Loot tax would encourage more rulers to launch wars for other things than total annihilation of the enemy realm.

More interestingly, I could envision an actual letter of marque being issued to a specific army, granting that army permission to loot in a specific realm, and returning some percentage of the takings to the Crown.

This would not require a declaration of war, just a lack of a peace treaty. It would also not permit any takeovers, just looting.